Equally Safe delivery plan: year one update

Governance and Monitoring Progress

When the Delivery Plan was published in November 2017, the focus of the Scottish Government shifted to ensuring effective implementation of the actions within the Plan through collaboration between partners and key stakeholders. In order to ensure we took this forward effectively, we instituted fresh governance arrangement to identify emerging issues, drive progress, scale up participation, and maintain rigorous accountability. In doing so, we have instituted a refreshed Joint Strategic Board co-chaired at Ministerial/Spokesperson level by the Scottish Government and COSLA. This group will focus on influencing strategic direction and identifying major emerging issues in relation to gender based violence. We have also formed a Joint Delivery Group, co-chaired at official level by the Scottish Government and COSLA. Its main focus will be to ensure that every agency and organisation are delivering their commitments under the Delivery Plan. These groups will be complemented by a Stakeholder Advisory Forum, to harness the expertise of organisations and academics in this field, and an Experience Expert Panel, to ensure that we continue to build on learning from our pilot participation projects to ensure that lived survivors of gender based violence continue to influence the implementation of the plan.

With funding from the Scottish Government, COSLA has recruited an Equally Safe Policy Co-ordinator in September 2018. This post ensures further focus to COSLA’s leadership and implementation of Equally Safe across Local Authorities in Scotland.

The next 12 months of COSLA’s activity to drive forward Equally Safe implementation with Scotland’s 32 local authorities has been defined and approved by the Community Wellbeing Board. The COSLA Equally Safe Action Plan outlines a broad range of activities that will be driven forward across the period November 2018 to the end of October 2019.

Through the life of the Delivery Plan, the Scottish Government will receive updates from agencies and organisations in relation to their progress against the actions and objectives within the Plan. COSLA’s Community Wellbeing Board will raise awareness of the need for the adoption of a holistic response to the ambitions of Equally Safe across COSLA’s Boards and will track and report on all linked progress.

A progress report will continue to be published on an annual basis over the lifetime of the Plan.

The narrative on pages 8 to 26 sets out key achievements against some of the actions and associated objectives. It also outlines how we intend to build on this success and move forward.

The table at Annex A also provides updates against all of the 118 actions and forms part of this year one report.

Scottish society embraces equality and mutual respect, and rejects all forms of violence against women and girls

Objectives

• Positive gender roles are promoted
• People enjoy healthy, positive relationships
• Children and Young People develop an understanding of safe, healthy and

• positive relationships from an early age.
• Individuals and communities recognise and challenge violent and abusive